STUDENTS & SCIENTISTS UNITED FOR BREAST CANCER PREVENTION
RESEARCHHeidi
Park

I’ll be frank: I didn’t know what to expect when I first arrived
at 136 Harrison Avenue on July 9th. Of course, I had read all the essays
and the studies that Laura Weinberg had forwarded to me, as well as whatever
else I was able to get my hands on. But the few bits of information I was
able to glean were not nearly enough to satisfy my growing anxiety—even
panic—as I took out my phone and began dialing the lab to let them know
I had arrived.

After I made my way to the building on Harrison Avenue and into the lab,
I realized that no essay, no studies, and no amount of googling could have accurately
described what the experience was actually like.

To begin, everyone at the lab, from Ana, Carlos, and Maricel to the lab
technicians, was as warm and easy to talk to as everyone said they were. I
was the sole Yankees fan in an office full of Red Sox fans, but they were still
willing to answer all of my questions (no matter how stupid they got) and did
everything they could to make my stay better (“It shows how accepting we
are,” Maricel said). Ana always had a smile for me whenever I saw
her, and Carlos would invite me to his office just to talk. The post docs and
lab techs always included me in their conversations and would tell me about everything
from their little secrets about colleges that they don’t want you to know,
to where you could find “free” chocolate in the
office.

Life at the lab was certainly not what I expected. Granted it had its serious
moments, such as when I learned about the harmful effects of endocrine disruptors,
more specifically Bisphenol-A (BPA), a compound commonly used in the manufacture
of plastics. Before coming to Tufts, I had read studies done by the lab
that had linked that fetal exposure to BPA led to abnormal mammary gland development
in mice and cancer in rats. But it’s one thing to read about it on
paper. It’s quite another thing to see the glands and look at the
plastic all around you as you feel the hardness of the tumor it helped caused
beneath your fingers. Words are very poor substitutes
for actual experience.

But it had its fun moments as well. I remember watching one of the lab
techs as they expressed their frustration while trying to unstick cells from
the bottom, wondering if it would be OK to just bang the bottle furiously on
the table (they didn’t). It just goes to show you that science can
be frustrating for all of us, even those of us with Bachelors in Biology. Something
I can DEFINITELY relate to when it comes
to doing titrations in chemistry class. And physics. Especially physics.

As I said earlier, no essay, no studies, no Googling can
ever be an adequate substitute for actually experiencing
it yourself. I don’t think that
my essay is either, no matter how hard I’ve tried to capture those wonderful
2 weeks onto these two pages. Words are, after all, poor substitutes for
experience. But Tufts was definitely an experience worth having. I
know I’ve said that words are poor substitutes for experience and all,
but if these words mean anything to you, I highly recommend you to just go for
it. Apply. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have a much more
rewarding experience than I did (although that would certainly be hard to top). What
have you got to lose? Go for it!